As the code to the Linux kernel is open source, anyone can go through it and study it, modify it, patch it, and so on. And because it is also hosted on GitHub, it is quite easy to access. So easy, in fact, that someone has made a search tool which will instantly show results for the Linux kernel code (think Google Instant).

If you go to LiveGrep (link below), you can do just that. Named after the command line tool which prints specific contents of a file directly to the terminal, it’s “live” online version is currently specific to just the Linux kernel. The kernel is still rather large, so having a tool like this is definitely useful.

To search for something, simply enter in a regex expression into the top text box and an optional file path in the bottom one. In no time, you’ll be shown different results for what you might be looking for. Maybe someday this tool can be expanded to any GitHub project.